So I've gone mad and decided to try and compare most editions of D&D with Pathfinder 1. In this case 1st through 3.5 and 5th (I've not lost enough sanity points to use 4e).
The issue is that while I have (and can fairly easily find) 3.5, PF1, and 5e there's not a lot around for 1e, 2e, or 3.0.
What am I looking to compare? Mostly the classes and races to see how they changed over time.
I usually get in trouble with the mods for just positing a link or two without enough independent descriptive text, but if you do a youtube search there are many comparisons between the editions.
which includes OD&D, BD&D, AD&D with the last one having 2 editions the first being Gary's and the second being post-Gary, and the middle having a pair of expansions, the final draft of which is called BECMI.
and the D20system/WOC versions which are 3rd-5th editions and all intermediaries such as 3.5 and also perhaps some independent OGL projects, pathfinder being one, but also things published by Monte Cooke after leaving WOC; most notably the books of Eldritch Might which contain a superior (IMHO) version of the bard.
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Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
I usually get in trouble with the mods for just positing a link or two without enough independent descriptive text, but if you do a youtube search there are many comparisons between the editions.
which includes OD&D, BD&D, AD&D with the last one having 2 editions the first being Gary's and the second being post-Gary, and the middle having a pair of expansions, the final draft of which is called BECMI.
and the D20system/WOC versions which are 3rd-5th editions and all intermediaries such as 3.5 and also perhaps some independent OGL projects, pathfinder being one, but also things published by Monte Cooke after leaving WOC; most notably the books of Eldritch Might which contain a superior (IMHO) version of the bard.
Thanks a lot! I knew I couldn't have been the only one to ever try this, but my searches kept coming back with things I didn't want!
Most of the people that hate on it never got to know it very well, mostly to their loss. If you're trying to understand D&D's evolution, it's a pretty important step. Many 5e features either were directly ported over from 4e or are clear reactions to things that weren't well received in 4e.
Most of the people that hate on it never got to know it very well, mostly to their loss. If you're trying to understand D&D's evolution, it's a pretty important step. Many 5e features either were directly ported over from 4e or are clear reactions to things that weren't well received in 4e.
While I am aware of some of the uses, and issues, but for me 4e is a continuity break. They had to destroy Faerûn to make the system work, and if that doesn't show it was the wrong decision, nothing ever will.
as does a number of things in Pathfinder 2e as well.
Frankly, I would STILL be playing it if they either open sourced the software or allowed me to subscribe to it again and would happily be still playing 4e.
and feel free to ask for first hand specifics if you want. I for one have played every edition since the early-mid 80s at least a bit.
One thing I found out somewhat recently that never made sense, but does now in per WotC days was the class XP progression. Every class had it's own progression table. I loved when 3.x changed that to a single progression(however, I now hate XP in general and just prefer to use milestone, THANKS 4e!!!!). However I recently learned how one on of the major complaints in 3.x was directly affected by that change.
If you have ever hear the phrase "Linear fighters, quadratic wizards", you know the issue I speak of(which 4e also fixed IMHO, but that's an aside). I just recently learned that that issue of wizards being vastly more powerful than fighters at higher levels was exactly why there were different XP charts. It was EXPECTED that characters would be varying levels and that was part of the game design.
Most of the people that hate on it never got to know it very well, mostly to their loss. If you're trying to understand D&D's evolution, it's a pretty important step. Many 5e features either were directly ported over from 4e or are clear reactions to things that weren't well received in 4e.
While I am aware of some of the uses, and issues, but for me 4e is a continuity break. They had to destroy Faerûn to make the system work, and if that doesn't show it was the wrong decision, nothing ever will.
Setting content is 95% independent of edition, especially one as generic as Faerun. If I wanted to run 3.5 Faerun in 4e, it would have been simple to do so. To that end, I'd rather each edition try something new with settings because I really don't need to buy a reprint of lore and maps that I already have.
Most of the people that hate on it never got to know it very well, mostly to their loss. If you're trying to understand D&D's evolution, it's a pretty important step. Many 5e features either were directly ported over from 4e or are clear reactions to things that weren't well received in 4e.
While I am aware of some of the uses, and issues, but for me 4e is a continuity break. They had to destroy Faerûn to make the system work, and if that doesn't show it was the wrong decision, nothing ever will.
Setting content is 95% independent of edition, especially one as generic as Faerun. If I wanted to run 3.5 Faerun in 4e, it would have been simple to do so. To that end, I'd rather each edition try something new with settings because I really don't need to buy a reprint of lore and maps that I already have.
4th Edition Faerun definitely ruined the setting in a way that was unthinkable before. Of course you can argue, that you leave out features of edition you don't like, but that is really not the point. Yes, you can leave out crippling changes to the setting. You can also leave out the mutilated alignment system that didn't make any sense in the slightest and you could possibly even leave out MMO trinity style combat, so you would basically play 4e without playing 4e. 4th Edition has a bad reputation for a reason, and that reason is certainly not ignorance about 4e rules. Wizards tried to turn D&D into a video game without a computer and failed horribly at the attempt. They learned from their mistakes however, so 5e is certainly again an edition worth playing.
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+ Instaboot to murderhobos + I don't watch Critical Role, and no, I really shouldn't either +
Most of the people that hate on it never got to know it very well, mostly to their loss. If you're trying to understand D&D's evolution, it's a pretty important step. Many 5e features either were directly ported over from 4e or are clear reactions to things that weren't well received in 4e.
While I am aware of some of the uses, and issues, but for me 4e is a continuity break. They had to destroy Faerûn to make the system work, and if that doesn't show it was the wrong decision, nothing ever will.
Setting content is 95% independent of edition, especially one as generic as Faerun. If I wanted to run 3.5 Faerun in 4e, it would have been simple to do so. To that end, I'd rather each edition try something new with settings because I really don't need to buy a reprint of lore and maps that I already have.
4th Edition Faerun definitely ruined the setting in a way that was unthinkable before. Of course you can argue, that you leave out features of edition you don't like, but that is really not the point. Yes, you can leave out crippling changes to the setting. You can also leave out the mutilated alignment system that didn't make any sense in the slightest and you could possibly even leave out MMO trinity style combat, so you would basically play 4e without playing 4e. 4th Edition has a bad reputation for a reason, and that reason is certainly not ignorance about 4e rules. Wizards tried to turn D&D into a video game without a computer and failed horribly at the attempt. They learned from their mistakes however, so 5e is certainly again an edition worth playing.
It didn't. Forgotten Realms wasn't even the default setting for 4e. Any changes made to any setting under 4e are completely unrelated to 4e as a system and aren't relevant to the current discussion.
No more so than the semi constant "these gods are dead." "No wait, some of these gods are no longer dead now" or
the "ancient super op wizards disappeared 1000+ years ago when one of their egomaniacal guys tried to become a god and broke magic". "No wait, now they are back and are super shadowy wizards trying to take over the continent".
CRAZY shit happens in the FR all the time, i mean bat shit crazy world changing stuff. Its kind of something you either deal with, ignore, or do a different world.
4th Edition has a bad reputation for a reason, and that reason is certainly not ignorance about 4e rules. Wizards tried to turn D&D into a video game without a computer and failed horribly at the attempt. They learned from their mistakes however, so 5e is certainly again an edition worth playing.
4e has a bad reputation because it took aim and a bunch of sacred cows, and it turned out that some of them were more sacred than the designers thought. The only thing actually video gamey about it was that it made tanking a real thing, and that's actually something there's plenty of demand for.
The biggest complaint with 4e was that it made all the classes look somewhat similar: you didn't have spellcasters and martials, instead everyone had powers and the difference between classes was mostly which list you could pick from. There were legitimate reasons for doing this (having completely different subsystems for combat and spellcasting is why the old 'linear fighter, quadratic wizard' meme came to be, which persists even in 5e) but they did a clunky job of it.
Less mentioned, but I think a factor, was that they fixed the 'linear fighter, quadratic wizard' problem by turning it into 'linear fighter, linear wizard'; spells were fairly short on spectacle. Personally I'd probably have gone for 'quadratic fighter' as a fix, but there are people who take offense at anime-scale fighters.
Uniform classes sound like a fatal problem for me. Even 5e kind of feels a bit samey - mostly because subclasses blur the lines, I think.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Uniform classes sound like a fatal problem for me. Even 5e kind of feels a bit samey - mostly because subclasses blur the lines, I think.
It's very hard to make characters play distinctly differently but still be even moderately balanced against one another (it's worth attempting, but it rarely works terribly well). For example, it's impossible to balance long rest classes against short rest classes, because either the short rest classes will be underpowered when you have a low number of encounters per day, the long rest classes will be underpowered when you have a high number, or both.
Because D&D has a DM, balance is less important than it would be in a board game or CRPG, but that doesn't mean it can be completely ignored.
4e Faerun was a bleeding mess. A short time after the Avatar Crisis they killed some of the most important gods again, so it became impossible to take the pantheon series anymore, except of course for their chosen, who somehow keep der their chosen status despite their deity's death. What they did with the Drow and their pantheon was an even greater abomination, the War of the Spiderqueen was one of the worst novel series ever to be set in the Forgotten Realms, and they were written for the transition into 4e. Thankfully Wizards realized what they had done and let Ao, the Almighty God of Edition Changes undo most of the destruction. Eberron and Dragonlance never received a transitional story line, so these settings escaped most of the madness that was 4e.
The alignment system was IMO arguably the worst piece of the worst edition. They limited alignments to lawful good, good, unligned, evil and chaotic evil. Of course, without the two axis nothing about the alignments made sense anymore. They could have kept to old system or skipped alignments altogether, both would have been fine, but 4e removed all logic from the alignment system.
Real tanking is something that shouldn't work, at least not easily in a TTRPG, at least when the enemy is reasonably intelligent, i.e.: you fight dragons, mindflayers and liches, no algorithms. No dragon should be easily provoked by the fighter yelling insults, while the wizards is casting spells.
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+ Instaboot to murderhobos + I don't watch Critical Role, and no, I really shouldn't either +
Real tanking is something that shouldn't work, at least not easily in a TTRPG, at least when the enemy is reasonably intelligent, i.e.: you fight dragons, mindflayers and liches, no algorithms. No dragon should be easily provoked by the fighter yelling insults, while the wizards is casting spells.
Tanking in 4e was not based on insults, it was based in having specific abilities that punished being ignored. The sentinel feat in 5e is basically "I want to be a 4e fighter".
There are basic things about D&D that I do not like. But live with.
Short rest vs. long rest. Whats the reason for shortening up an elves sleep requirement?
Experience progression. The old system was fine and the new system in fine. But what about the long lived characters vs the short lived characters? By middle age Elves should be 20th level in a few classes. I know most if not all people ignore this and thus do not see it as a problem but I think of a heroic character as something that might influence the history of the world we are playing in. If a human was world changing at 20th level fighter in 40 years of life what about the world changing influence of an elf who was a 20th level fighter in the same 40 years and spent the next 40 years becoming a wizard and the next 40 years ..... and so on.
I do not like how there are no or extremely few magic item creation rules and spells. There as a few temporary spells but no permanent ones. This was so lacking that it seems like they created the artificer class just to make up for it somewhat.
4e Faerun was a bleeding mess. A short time after the Avatar Crisis they killed some of the most important gods again, so it became impossible to take the pantheon series anymore
What they did with the Drow and their pantheon was an even greater abomination, the War of the Spiderqueen was one of the worst novel series ever to be set in the Forgotten Realms, and they were written for the transition into 4e.
See, im going to completely disagree with this statement. From my perspective, having a flexible Pantheon that changes over time shows some level of decent writing. The fact that even the "Gods" are not sacred and locked in stone IMHO is a good thing for story purposes and creates some good narrative for novels and makes the world seem more alive. Now, with that said, I was not a huge fan of much of the Avatar series, but I was mostly fine with how it ended with the Kelemvor/Cyric taking over for Myrkul/Bane-Bhaal. I was less impressed with the specific way Midnight became Mystra, though not against the final concept of it.
I think having the Gods actively engaged in the world in various ways helps the story both from a novel perspective as well as a Role playing perspective. Moander has attempted to come back twice that I can recall and such things power epic adventures IMHO.
I will admit however, that some groups just don't want such world shaking things happening in their game and if so, yea, Forgotten Realms is not the world for them.
As well, I am fairly sure that War of the Spider Queen was not in any way invented for the 4e transition, even if it ended up being a soft way. It was started in 2002 and finished in 2005, while 4e did not see the light of day until 2008. YES, they might have had some big inklings about how FR was going to change in 4e towards the end of the WotSQ, but I don't think they planned it with 4e in mind.
Honestly, the only issue I had with that whole thing(or rather the Lady Penitent follow up) was the death of Eilistraee, the only good drow deity. I think that was a bit of a kick in the ass for the drow as a whole and am glad the undid that.
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So I've gone mad and decided to try and compare most editions of D&D with Pathfinder 1. In this case 1st through 3.5 and 5th (I've not lost enough sanity points to use 4e).
The issue is that while I have (and can fairly easily find) 3.5, PF1, and 5e there's not a lot around for 1e, 2e, or 3.0.
What am I looking to compare? Mostly the classes and races to see how they changed over time.
Can anyone help?
I usually get in trouble with the mods for just positing a link or two without enough independent descriptive text, but if you do a youtube search there are many comparisons between the editions.
compareing all editions of d&d - YouTube
You can divide D&D into the TSR version;
which includes OD&D, BD&D, AD&D with the last one having 2 editions the first being Gary's and the second being post-Gary, and the middle having a pair of expansions, the final draft of which is called BECMI.
and the D20system/WOC versions which are 3rd-5th editions and all intermediaries such as 3.5 and also perhaps some independent OGL projects, pathfinder being one, but also things published by Monte Cooke after leaving WOC; most notably the books of Eldritch Might which contain a superior (IMHO) version of the bard.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
Thanks a lot! I knew I couldn't have been the only one to ever try this, but my searches kept coming back with things I didn't want!
Most of the people that hate on it never got to know it very well, mostly to their loss. If you're trying to understand D&D's evolution, it's a pretty important step. Many 5e features either were directly ported over from 4e or are clear reactions to things that weren't well received in 4e.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
While I am aware of some of the uses, and issues, but for me 4e is a continuity break. They had to destroy Faerûn to make the system work, and if that doesn't show it was the wrong decision, nothing ever will.
as does a number of things in Pathfinder 2e as well.
Frankly, I would STILL be playing it if they either open sourced the software or allowed me to subscribe to it again and would happily be still playing 4e.
and feel free to ask for first hand specifics if you want. I for one have played every edition since the early-mid 80s at least a bit.
One thing I found out somewhat recently that never made sense, but does now in per WotC days was the class XP progression. Every class had it's own progression table. I loved when 3.x changed that to a single progression(however, I now hate XP in general and just prefer to use milestone, THANKS 4e!!!!). However I recently learned how one on of the major complaints in 3.x was directly affected by that change.
If you have ever hear the phrase "Linear fighters, quadratic wizards", you know the issue I speak of(which 4e also fixed IMHO, but that's an aside). I just recently learned that that issue of wizards being vastly more powerful than fighters at higher levels was exactly why there were different XP charts. It was EXPECTED that characters would be varying levels and that was part of the game design.
That's just one thing people may not know.
Setting content is 95% independent of edition, especially one as generic as Faerun. If I wanted to run 3.5 Faerun in 4e, it would have been simple to do so. To that end, I'd rather each edition try something new with settings because I really don't need to buy a reprint of lore and maps that I already have.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
DM's Guild is a good source for PDF's. That's where I got my OD&D, Basic Rulescyclopedia, AD&D, 2E, 3.5E, and 4E books.
I had to ebay a 3.0E book, which I haven't gotten to compare yet.
4th Edition Faerun definitely ruined the setting in a way that was unthinkable before. Of course you can argue, that you leave out features of edition you don't like, but that is really not the point. Yes, you can leave out crippling changes to the setting. You can also leave out the mutilated alignment system that didn't make any sense in the slightest and you could possibly even leave out MMO trinity style combat, so you would basically play 4e without playing 4e. 4th Edition has a bad reputation for a reason, and that reason is certainly not ignorance about 4e rules. Wizards tried to turn D&D into a video game without a computer and failed horribly at the attempt. They learned from their mistakes however, so 5e is certainly again an edition worth playing.
+ Instaboot to murderhobos + I don't watch Critical Role, and no, I really shouldn't either +
So, how did 4e ruin the setting?
It didn't. Forgotten Realms wasn't even the default setting for 4e. Any changes made to any setting under 4e are completely unrelated to 4e as a system and aren't relevant to the current discussion.
Agreed.
No more so than the semi constant "these gods are dead." "No wait, some of these gods are no longer dead now" or
the "ancient super op wizards disappeared 1000+ years ago when one of their egomaniacal guys tried to become a god and broke magic". "No wait, now they are back and are super shadowy wizards trying to take over the continent".
CRAZY shit happens in the FR all the time, i mean bat shit crazy world changing stuff. Its kind of something you either deal with, ignore, or do a different world.
4e has a bad reputation because it took aim and a bunch of sacred cows, and it turned out that some of them were more sacred than the designers thought. The only thing actually video gamey about it was that it made tanking a real thing, and that's actually something there's plenty of demand for.
The biggest complaint with 4e was that it made all the classes look somewhat similar: you didn't have spellcasters and martials, instead everyone had powers and the difference between classes was mostly which list you could pick from. There were legitimate reasons for doing this (having completely different subsystems for combat and spellcasting is why the old 'linear fighter, quadratic wizard' meme came to be, which persists even in 5e) but they did a clunky job of it.
Less mentioned, but I think a factor, was that they fixed the 'linear fighter, quadratic wizard' problem by turning it into 'linear fighter, linear wizard'; spells were fairly short on spectacle. Personally I'd probably have gone for 'quadratic fighter' as a fix, but there are people who take offense at anime-scale fighters.
Uniform classes sound like a fatal problem for me. Even 5e kind of feels a bit samey - mostly because subclasses blur the lines, I think.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
It's very hard to make characters play distinctly differently but still be even moderately balanced against one another (it's worth attempting, but it rarely works terribly well). For example, it's impossible to balance long rest classes against short rest classes, because either the short rest classes will be underpowered when you have a low number of encounters per day, the long rest classes will be underpowered when you have a high number, or both.
Because D&D has a DM, balance is less important than it would be in a board game or CRPG, but that doesn't mean it can be completely ignored.
4e Faerun was a bleeding mess. A short time after the Avatar Crisis they killed some of the most important gods again, so it became impossible to take the pantheon series anymore, except of course for their chosen, who somehow keep der their chosen status despite their deity's death. What they did with the Drow and their pantheon was an even greater abomination, the War of the Spiderqueen was one of the worst novel series ever to be set in the Forgotten Realms, and they were written for the transition into 4e. Thankfully Wizards realized what they had done and let Ao, the Almighty God of Edition Changes undo most of the destruction. Eberron and Dragonlance never received a transitional story line, so these settings escaped most of the madness that was 4e.
The alignment system was IMO arguably the worst piece of the worst edition. They limited alignments to lawful good, good, unligned, evil and chaotic evil. Of course, without the two axis nothing about the alignments made sense anymore. They could have kept to old system or skipped alignments altogether, both would have been fine, but 4e removed all logic from the alignment system.
Real tanking is something that shouldn't work, at least not easily in a TTRPG, at least when the enemy is reasonably intelligent, i.e.: you fight dragons, mindflayers and liches, no algorithms. No dragon should be easily provoked by the fighter yelling insults, while the wizards is casting spells.
+ Instaboot to murderhobos + I don't watch Critical Role, and no, I really shouldn't either +
Tanking in 4e was not based on insults, it was based in having specific abilities that punished being ignored. The sentinel feat in 5e is basically "I want to be a 4e fighter".
There are basic things about D&D that I do not like. But live with.
Short rest vs. long rest. Whats the reason for shortening up an elves sleep requirement?
Experience progression. The old system was fine and the new system in fine. But what about the long lived characters vs the short lived characters? By middle age Elves should be 20th level in a few classes. I know most if not all people ignore this and thus do not see it as a problem but I think of a heroic character as something that might influence the history of the world we are playing in. If a human was world changing at 20th level fighter in 40 years of life what about the world changing influence of an elf who was a 20th level fighter in the same 40 years and spent the next 40 years becoming a wizard and the next 40 years ..... and so on.
I do not like how there are no or extremely few magic item creation rules and spells. There as a few temporary spells but no permanent ones. This was so lacking that it seems like they created the artificer class just to make up for it somewhat.
See, im going to completely disagree with this statement. From my perspective, having a flexible Pantheon that changes over time shows some level of decent writing. The fact that even the "Gods" are not sacred and locked in stone IMHO is a good thing for story purposes and creates some good narrative for novels and makes the world seem more alive. Now, with that said, I was not a huge fan of much of the Avatar series, but I was mostly fine with how it ended with the Kelemvor/Cyric taking over for Myrkul/Bane-Bhaal. I was less impressed with the specific way Midnight became Mystra, though not against the final concept of it.
I think having the Gods actively engaged in the world in various ways helps the story both from a novel perspective as well as a Role playing perspective. Moander has attempted to come back twice that I can recall and such things power epic adventures IMHO.
I will admit however, that some groups just don't want such world shaking things happening in their game and if so, yea, Forgotten Realms is not the world for them.
As well, I am fairly sure that War of the Spider Queen was not in any way invented for the 4e transition, even if it ended up being a soft way. It was started in 2002 and finished in 2005, while 4e did not see the light of day until 2008. YES, they might have had some big inklings about how FR was going to change in 4e towards the end of the WotSQ, but I don't think they planned it with 4e in mind.
Honestly, the only issue I had with that whole thing(or rather the Lady Penitent follow up) was the death of Eilistraee, the only good drow deity. I think that was a bit of a kick in the ass for the drow as a whole and am glad the undid that.